cookie tree for christmas

I've always loved the look of macaron trees, they are just so pretty! But since my daughter is allergic to nuts, I tend to only make macarons for other people. And although I have made nut-free macarons before, I don't want her to get used to the idea of eating macarons in case she starts to think that regular macarons are okay for her to eat! So for Christmas this year, instead of making a macaron tree, I made one out of sugar cookies!

For the cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and used a small round cookie cutter that was approximately the same size as macarons. Then I baked them at 350F for about 10 minutes, until the cookie edges were golden.

I also made sure to cut out several star-shaped cookies, that would go on the top of the tree.



For the royal icing (recipe also in my book!), I tinted it leaf green, and used stiff icing to outline each cookie.

Then I flooded each one with runny icing, and let it dry overnight.

I also iced the star cookies with white icing and same approach - stiff icing to outline the cookie, and runny icing to fill each cookie.

Once the icing was dry, I mixed edible gold dust with clear vanilla extract, and then used a food-safe brush to paint the stars gold.

When I was ready to assemble my cookie tree, I covered a styrofoam cone with waxed paper, and then used royal icing "glue" to carefully attach my cookies.

After several rows though, my cookies started to fall off (eeek!) from the weight of the other cookies, so I used a thick silk ribbon to keep the rows in place until the royal icing "glue" had time to dry.

The final touch was the gold star on the top of the tree. I used two of the gold star cookies, and sandwiched them around a bamboo skewer, using royal icing to "glue" them together.

A perfect centerpiece for the table!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas!!!

3D cookie christmas tree

Wow! Christmas and New Years flew by in the blink of an eye! Hopefully it's not too late to share this cute little tree that I made for our celebration Christmas Eve!

A long time ago I had seen this Christmas tree cutter set in a magazine somewhere, and I thought it was the cutest thing! So when Christmas rolled around this year, I thought I would make my own cookie tree, using this star cutter set that I already owned.

Even though there were only 4 different sized star cutters in this set, I figured I could achieve the same effect by cutting out several of each size.

Note that I cut out less of the bigger stars, and more of the medium and smaller stars.

Once my cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a half batch of buttercream frosting (recipe in my new book!), and tinted it leaf green. Then I placed a small blob on the bottom of my largest cookie, to attach it to a 6-inch cake board.

Next I fitted a pastry bag with a Wilton #352 leaf tip, filled it with my green icing, and piped little leaves around the perimeter of the star before filling it in completely with leaves. (See my Christmas wreath cookies for the same technique!)

Then I placed my next cookie on top, and again piped leaves around the perimeter of the star, after which I filled in the cookie with leaves. Around this time I also started to sprinkle on little white nonpareils after finishing with each cookie, to give the effect of snow on the leaves.

I continued with all of the star cookies, from the largest cookies on the bottom, to the smallest cookies on the top.

I finished it off with a small yellow star sprinkle on the top of the tree (taken from this set of star sprinkles), and more white nonpareils all over.

And there you have it, a cute little 3D Christmas tree made out of cookies! It made for the perfect little centerpiece and dessert all in one!

christmas tree cutout apple pie

Along with the strawberry Santas that I made for Christmas dessert this year, I also made an apple pie. But not just any apple pie; this one was decorated with lots and lots of Christmas tree pie crust cut outs! I had seen pies like this on Pinterest in the past, mainly with star cut outs for the Fourth of July. So I thought it would be fun to do for Christmas as well.

So I made my favorite all-butter pie crust, and divided it in half. I rolled out and fitted the first half into a 9-inch pie pan, and used the other half to roll and cut out Christmas tree shapes with a cookie cutter.

Then I peeled, cored, and sliced 5 apples, tossed them with flour, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt, and spooned them on top of the bottom crust. And then it was time to decorate the top with the Christmas tree cut outs!

To help give the crust a nice golden color, I brushed the top of the crust with egg wash, and then sprinkled on sanding sugar. After baking the pie at 350F for about 50 minutes, it looked like this!

My pie crust and the cutouts shrank quite a bit, but it was still quite tasty!



Hope you had a Merry Christmas!